Nexus a Sherlock AU fanfic
by DearSherlock
Summary: Set in the Blade Runner AU. Doctor John Hamish Watson, recently retired from the Earth Army, has decided to relocate to the Mars colony rather than accept charity from family or friends. On his way to the space port he runs into an enigmatic stranger... Rated M to be on the safe side.
1. Chapter 1

"Good morning, good morning, it's great to stay up la-"

_SLAM._

With one well-aimed fist John Watson shut up the tinny-sounding alarm. _What on earth had Sarah been thinking_, he thought for the thousandth time, as he pondered his ex's choice in presents. Then he groaned as the pain in his shoulder registered. Wrong arm.

He sat up on the hard bed, bleary-eyed, and wondered why the thing had woken him up in the first place. It was still dark outside, he realised, as he watched the faint flashing of the neons through the blinds of the tiny hotel room. Through the thin single window he could hear the perpetual sound of Coca-Cola adverts and recruitment slogans for the off-worlds. Some things never changed. He didn't even need to look outside to know that it was still raining.

It slowly dawned on him, the thought that he had been trying to push away for the last few minutes. _Off world_. Today was the first day of his new life, his new beginning on the Mars colony, and as far as he could see the end of everything that had ever been important to him.

He groaned again as he cursed the bullet that had turned his life upside down in that fraction of a second only a few months ago. He wished he'd never taken the Moon assignment, and not for the first time. But the extra money had sounded good, and besides, it was in the line of duty.

John sighed and stretched as well as his shoulder allowed him. There was no point in looking back. He just wished that Earth military pensions would actually be large enough to enable him to stay on the planet which he had been nearly killed for trying to defend.

He took his wash bag and made his way along the long, barren corridor to the communal shower area. The grey walls and total lack of décor did nothing to lift his spirits. Marks and stains on the paintwork told stories of accident and neglect, and possibly worse. The yellow rings on the ceilings told of months or years of leaking water pipes. He was surprised that even the drinking water shortage with the exorbitant price increases that had followed in its wake had not motivated the owners enough to make repairs. _They probably just reduced the shower time_, John thought.

With a pang of regret he remembered Sarah's bright and cheerful flat, seeming now like an oasis of homeliness, like a haven to him. Once again John wondered if he was making a mistake. But here he was, the die had been cast, and he was set on a course that was almost irreversible now. Looking back, or even looking sideways, served no purpose.

There were a few other people around in the shower area, mostly looking as dazed as himself, but he didn't take a great deal of notice. Keeping his head down he entered one of the shabby-looking cubicles and inserted his token. He tried to enjoy the sixty second shower but as usual the water ran out before he had finished rinsing and it left him feeling dissatisfied.

After getting dressed he considered breakfast. He knew about these hotel breakfasts, he'd been subjected to them before on several occasions. At the same time he didn't want to begin an off-world flight on an empty stomach, and there really wasn't much time to go wandering around the space port looking for something more acceptable. Besides, breakfast was included in the hotel-and-flight package and he was painfully aware that he would need all the money he could hold onto when he arrived on Mars. In the end he decided to try his luck and go downstairs.

The lift made its way slowly and smoothly down from the 19th floor. At level five it stopped to let in another guest. John gave him a cursory glance and muttered some kind of greeting, out of politeness more than anything else. Rich boy, he thought, judging by the sharp suit and the fact he could afford to stay on the lower floors. A glimpse through the closing door told him that not everyone in the hotel was subjected to battleship grey walls and dank shower rooms; the décor was lush, extravagant almost, and the carpet looked more comfortable than John's bed had been.

The man met his eyes and gave him a curt nod, looking him over briefly before returning his attention to the small communicator he was holding. John couldn't escape the feeling that he had just been evaluated and dismissed as irrelevant. There was something about the man's clear blue eyes, he thought, that was entirely unsettling. Something altogether too perceptive.

He found himself staring at the guy. He had a strangely angular face, slightly slanted eyes and a tall thin frame. Combined with the expensive suit and the thoughtless untidiness of his mop of dark hair he looked outlandish, peculiar. Everything but the hair and the eyes said city banker, or stock trader, but John was almost sure that he wasn't. He checked himself. _Christ, what am I doing_. For all he knew the man was secret police, or worse, replicant.

He'd heard the rumours like everyone else, or course. How the new series of Nexus models was nearly indistinguishable from humans. How some of them were living undercover on Earth, illegal or not. He turned his gaze away and looked up at the lift's floor indicator lights instead, now settling on _ground floor_.

When the lift stopped the man gave John an amused look before politely allowing him out first. John didn't meet his eyes, suddenly embarrassed, and made his way to the breakfast room with far more speed than was strictly necessary.

-oooOooo-

Breakfast was everything he had feared it would be. True, the cook didn't have a great deal to work with if all that was available was reconstituted protein products, but even so the sausages were some of the worst he had ever tasted. And he'd been in the military. He resolved to eat it anyway.

Outside the world was still in darkness, and rain. It didn't stop the usual bustle of the streets coming past the window, even this early in the morning. Everyone John saw rushing past looked hurried, pre-occupied, and sodden. It wasn't an appealing view, and after a while John turned away and looked at the interior of the restaurant instead.

The breakfast room itself at least was tidy, although that was all that could be said in its favour. Another anonymous mess hall, much the same as the army ones, not much different from the dining hall in the military hospital. The only difference was the thin sound of piped music that filled the air in this one, and the pretence at luxury that was conveyed by the plush carpet and the cheap gold-effect fittings around the room. Why anyone would pay money to come to such a place was a mystery to him.

The man from the lift had installed himself in a corner across the room. The place was otherwise quiet, and although John tried to focus on the disgusting breakfast in front of him his attention kept wandering over to the tall figure.

The stranger's eyes seemed to be continually glued to his communicator, and he seemed to be in the middle of a frantically typed conversation with somebody. _At least he won't notice me watching him_, John thought, as he tried to drink the lukewarm dishwater that the place served as coffee. He found the guy intriguing. His facial expressions continually changed as he typed. Most of the emotions rolling across his face were negative; various shades of disdain and anger, occasionally outright contempt. It was funny to actually see him roll his eyes at the device when an apparently particularly offensive reply arrived.

He looked at the man again. He wasn't having any food, so John concluded that he couldn't be going off world. Nobody with any sense would attempt space travel on an empty stomach. He was drinking the coffee though, and John was surprised to see that he actually seemed to be enjoying it. _No taste buds_, John concluded. Maybe he was a replicant after all.

Suddenly, the man kicked back his chair and jumped up. John startled from the unexpected movement and nearly dropped his cutlery. To his surprise the guy walked straight over to his table.

"Time to go, Doctor. You don't want to miss your flight."

"Wha-," John managed, but the tall man had gone, out of the door of the restaurant. John looked at his watch and jumped. He'd been right. He had no idea how it had suddenly got to 6:30, but if he didn't hurry he would be too late. He quickly grabbed his bag and ran outside into the rain.

-oooOooo-

He managed to catch the space port shuttle, but only just. Thankfully it would only take a few minutes if it didn't encounter any delays, and the traffic was still relatively light this early in the day. The shuttle was crowded though, and John just managed to squeeze in as the thing took off ponderously through the morning rain. His nostrils filled with the smell of rain-soaked clothes, fuel, many people's personal scents, and other unnamed but more unpleasant things. He pushed the memories of the military convoys to the back of his mind, held onto his bag and stared out of the window, trying not to look down.

John found his thoughts wandering to the stranger who had ensured he'd actually get to the space port in time. He couldn't work out how the man had known he was a doctor, or how he had figured that he was even travelling, let alone on which ship. He guessed he'd never find out, but still he was thankful. He really didn't savour the idea of having to explain to Sarah that he'd missed the flight, and God only knew how he would have afforded another ticket to Mars. It was kind enough already of her to have helped him out this once, considering he'd probably never see her again.

The rain had turned into a steady drizzle when the shuttle pulled into the space port and settled on the landing pad as ponderously as it had taken off. John tried to hold his own against the push and shove of the passengers getting off, but he couldn't avoid his shoulder getting jarred as a particularly abrasive man pushed his way past him, knocking him with the backpack he was carrying as he did so.

John grunted, wondering whether the guy was carrying bricks, and steeled himself against the pain. With a pained expression he set off towards the check-in point, wondering where he put his pain killers, and whether there was enough time to take some. In the end he decided to keep going and sort himself out on the flight.

Thankfully the check-in went smoothly and he didn't get searched. _There's always a first time for everything,_ he thought as he made his way to the gate. The space port was huge, small trolleys dashing here and there carrying the more moneyed passengers to their crafts, travellators along the endless corridors for the less fortunate. Most of the latter were broken, leaving John to trudge his way to the gate. By the time he got there he was exhausted and his shoulder was throbbing.

The ship was already boarding when he arrived, but he was glad to see he wasn't the last to get there. John looked at his ticket as he entered the dimly lit ship. _Seat 359B for takeoff_. It was right at the back of the craft, of course. He resigned himself to the cramped walk up the right-hand aisle and got going. The ship was already crowded with more people boarding still, and it promised to be a claustrophobic experience. The stifling heat inside the craft did nothing to help and neither did the smell that accompanied it.

Thankfully his hand luggage wasn't very big, most of his sparse belongings having been forwarded a couple of weeks ago on a slow cargo ship, and he managed to move without bumping into too many of his fellow passengers. He slowly made his way up, mumbling apologies as he went.

When he got to row 359 he stopped dead. Seat 359A, the window seat, was already occupied and he recognised the passenger. The tall man from the hotel. He looked like he had been there forever.

For a long moment, John didn't know what to say. The man was looking out of the window, seemingly far away in thought. John's seat was taken up by a briefcase, a pile of papers and an empty coffee cup, with what looked like a folded-up rug underneath it all.

He shifted uncomfortably, not wishing for a confrontation with someone he was going to share a seat with for four days, and cleared his throat.

"Ehm. Excuse me."

There was no reaction from the guy. John was getting more and more uncomfortable. He tried again.

"Ehm. Excuse me. Could you maybe move your things?"

Now the man looked up, giving him a vaguely disturbed look. "Oh."

He didn't seem to recognise John, but quickly cleared his belongings off the chair and put them underneath his seat. John realised it wasn't a rug but a very large coat that was at the bottom of the pile as the man moved it into one of the overhead lockers. The stranger sat back down and watched as John put his hand luggage away. John winced a bit as he lifted the bag above his head, his shoulder reminding him that he should take better care of himself. When he took his seat his neighbour turned back to the window.

"Europa or Moon?"

For a moment John didn't recognise it as a question.

"Sorry, what?"

"Which was it," the man repeated, now looking at John, "Europa or Moon?"

"Moon," John said, confused. "How did you…?"

The man smiled, and looked out of the window again. John thought of pressing the point, but he felt unsure. Besides, he needed to let Sarah know that he had got onto the ship before they weren't allowed to use their phones anymore.

He took the vid phone out of his bag and brought up Sarah's number. As he did so, the man next to him turned back to watch him. John hesitated a moment, then thought better of it. He really didn't want to be observed making what would probably have been his last face-to-face call with Sarah. He'd seen the cost of interplanetary calls, and had already realised that they would have to be saved for very special occasions indeed.

He sent her a text instead. Before he put the phone away again he looked at it, turning it over a few times in his hands. Harry's parting gift. Extravagant, beautiful, impractical, and second-hand. _A bit like the giver_, he thought cynically and put the thing in his pocket. The man next to him returned to staring out of the window.

John looked around the craft, taking stock of the place he was going to call home for four days. The seat he was in was comfortable enough, although there wasn't very much leg room. It was OK for him since he didn't have overly long legs, but he wondered how his neighbour was going to fare. John tried to recline the seat to see how far back it would go, and was disappointed but not surprised to find that it went back by thirty degrees or so and then stopped. Sleep would have to be upright. It wasn't as if he hadn't slept in worse conditions, although he worried how his shoulder would cope.

The seats in front and behind him were taken by what looked like business travellers. Across the aisle there was a young family with two pre-teen children who he guessed were relocating. He couldn't imagine anyone travelling with kids in these kinds of conditions for pleasure. The children were already getting bored and John vividly saw the kind of nightmare this flight could easily turn into. He sighed. There was nothing he could do about it.

He turned around and craned his neck to look at the rear end of the ship. It seemed to go on further than he expected, which looked promising. The brochure had made much of the on-board entertainment, and there was a chance that the bar was indeed half decent. It might also mean that his neighbours' children might not get as bored as he feared.

Having surveyed his limited surroundings, his gaze returned to the man at the window. He was still looking out over the space port, his eyes darting over the space port staff and vehicles as they came and went. He seemed to be completely absorbed in his observations, and John was wondering why he was taking such an intense interest. There wasn't much he could see in the movement of the uniformed workers and the shabby-looking support vehicles that would interest anyone.

John considered his options for a while, then decided that spending days sitting next to and being observed by an anonymous stranger was not acceptable. He took a deep breath, thinking of something neutral to say.

"You got here very quickly from the hotel," he settled on.

The man looked at him, his eyes scanning John's face a moment before answering. "I took a cab."

"Oh." The price of air taxis was that far out of John's range that the option hadn't even occurred to him. On the other hand, it seemed the guy did actually remember him from this morning. He was still looking at him, as if waiting to see what John would do next. John found his quiet composure just a little unnerving.

"I'm surprised you went for a seat in cattle class, then," John said, with a grimace. It didn't make much sense. Nobody in their right mind would book one of these if they could afford not to.

"It was a last-minute booking," the man replied, looking slightly put out. "All the decent seats had gone."

That, at least, made some sense. Still feeling pretty awkward, John extended his hand. He thought of himself as a people person, and was beginning to see this man as a bit of a challenge. Since he had nothing to do for the next four days he might as well give it his best shot.

"John," he said. "John Watson."

The man shook his hand, giving him a slightly curious look. "Sherlock Holmes."

It was clear to John that if he wanted to know anything about this Sherlock Holmes, he'd have to draw it out of him. The guy was as forthcoming as a brick wall.

"Are you… Just visiting Mars?"

"Yes."

_Lucky bastard_, John thought. "Business trip?"

"Clearly."

_Right_, thought John, _how was I supposed to know that?_ For all he knew the guy might just enjoy wearing a suit. The man was still watching him, but didn't seem about to offer any further information.

"Well. I couldn't just tell that by looking at you, could I," John said, but he smiled as he said it. He knew it was a little flippant, but he was getting a bit frustrated with the man, and he wanted to see if he could draw him out.

Sherlock Holmes looked at him for a moment, head slightly tilted back, and then answered, "While I can tell by looking at you that you are a retired army doctor, recently invalided from one of the off-world colonies after receiving a bullet to the left shoulder, and about to settle permanently on Mars for financial reasons. You have a brother who is worried about you, but you won't go to him for help, possibly because he's an alcoholic, more likely because he has recently walked out on his wife."

"You like to think you are making a considerable personal sacrifice leaving Earth and with it your current partner, but still consider emigrating off-world to be the only solution, suggesting that you either have less of an attachment to her than you pretend, or that you feel you have a point to prove. I would favour the latter from the fact that you are a moral man who clearly has a strong sense of duty."

John stared at him. For a precious few seconds he could think of nothing at all to say. The man was looking at him calmly, waiting for a reaction, assessing the impact of his words. After what seemed like an age, John managed, "What? _How_…_?_"

All he got in return was a sly smile as Sherlock Holmes pointed a long hand at the lights above their heads. Seat belt signs, flashing. "We're going."

John had just enough time to sort himself our before the ship started to move. He braced himself against the takeoff, unprepared, confused, in no way 'calm of mind and happy of heart' as the Interplanetary Travel Co's brochure advised travellers to be. He wasn't ready.

John hated space travel. He especially hated takeoff. It made him invariably feel disorientated, dizzy and sick. He tried to sort his thoughts out as the increasing G's started to register, trying to prepare himself for the crushing weight that he knew would soon be pressing his body flat against the chair. Next to him, Sherlock Holmes relaxed into his seat, closed his eyes and appeared to go off to sleep, looking like some lanky and comfortable feline. John groaned.

It was worse than he remembered. It was definitely a lot worse than the Moon journeys, and he'd thought they were bad at the time. John lay back in his seat, his eyes focusing desperately on the seatbelt sign above him, trying not to pass out. He was struggling to breathe and his vision was becoming blurred as the pressure on his body increased. The throbbing in his shoulder turned into a sharp, continuous pain.

Random images began to flash in front of his eyes. Visions of his parents' apartment, of Sarah smiling in bed. Harry holding a glass of whisky, giggling drunkenly, spilling half the contents over her shirt. Suddenly he felt as if he was falling, tumbling through the sky, and the image in front of his eyes was of himself plummeting back down to Earth, the clouds coming up to meet him. After that, everything went black.

-oooOooo-

When he came to it was to the sight of a young and pretty female face looking at him with a worried expression. He smiled vaguely at her, wondering how he got so lucky. Then he looked more closely and recognised the ITC uniform. _Space hostess_.

"Are you all right, sir?" the girl asked. "You seem to have passed out."

John sat up a little, trying to look composed. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you."

His head was still spinning and he felt sick. At least the terrible pressure on his body had gone, replaced by a feeling of lightness, and that must mean they had entered space and the artificial gravity had kicked in. Things should improve from here on.

The girl was holding something in front of his face, and he looked at it vaguely. A couple of white pills and a cup of water. "Travel sickness tablets, sir. I suggest you take them."

He said thank you, and absentmindedly took the pills from her. He looked at them a moment, trying to work out what they were, and then decided that he couldn't feel much worse even if there were going to be side-effects and swallowed them.

"Do you usually pass out when you travel?"

John couldn't place the voice a moment, and then realised that it was the man next to him asking the question. He turned around a little, still dazed, and looked at him.

"Mr Holmes. Yes, I mean no. I don't usually pass out, no."

"Please, call me Sherlock," the stranger said. "I apologise if I confused you earlier. My timing might have been better."

The memories of what had happened just before he passed out came back to John. He suddenly felt irritated, angry. He'd led a clean life, there was no need for anyone to follow him or dig around in his personal history. Who was this guy, anyway?

John cleared his throat. "Yeah. Can I ask why you know all this stuff? Because I'm not used to people digging around in my personal details. I haven't done anything to warrant it."

The man smiled at him a moment, in a self-satisfied kind of way. "I haven't. I simply observed."

"Really," was all John could come up with. He simply couldn't believe that. "How?"

Sherlock Holmes seemed to consider him a moment. "Your haircut, the way you hold yourself, say _military_. However, you have none of the customary callusing on the hands that come from the regular use of a firearm. Support staff then, but the Caduceus pin on your lapel says _doctor_, not something menial. Army doctor it is."

"You are travelling off-world yet you are alone and un-uniformed. Not work, then. Absence of leave to Mars? Unlikely going on the fact you stayed on the cheapest floor of our hotel, booked one of the worst seats on the flight and actually ate the breakfast. That says short of cash, and even the cheap seats on this craft cost a small fortune. So, resettlement it is, but why?"

"You are clearly too young to retire, but the way you move indicates a recent injury to the left shoulder. You are showing a degree of muscle wastage that can only be associated with a considerable time in a low-g environment. Had you been out of our solar system you would have been hospitalised in one of the colonies, but you returned to Earth so the injury occurred somewhere relatively local. Not Mars, its gravitational field is too strong, but one of the smaller off-worlds. Europa and Moon both have similar gravities, and you confirmed Moon yourself."

John found himself staring at the man, mouth slightly open, wondering if he'd finished. He couldn't quite believe what he was hearing.

Sherlock Holmes continued. "The recent unpleasantries on the Moon have been well publicised on Earth. I understand the rebels were badly resourced, with access only to simple weapons and home-made explosives. You bear no scarring to the throat or face which would have been nearly unavoidable had you been involved in an explosion, suggesting you were shot, and most likely with a firearm. From the way you move your arm, I'd say the bullet got you about here."

He reached out and touched John lightly on the shoulder. John winced, not so much because it hurt, but because he got the location exactly right. Before he had a chance to say anything, the man continued his impossible narrative.

"So, invalided on an army pension, not enough of an income to stay on Earth in any kind of comfort. Now most people would rely on family or friends at this point. Give me your phone."

John blinked, and without conscious thought took out his phone and passed it over. It was only when he saw it in the hands of the other man that he wondered what on Earth he was doing. He was mesmerising, this Holmes, there was no other word for it. And John was spellbound.

Sherlock Holmes turned the phone over in his hands a few times, studying it. "_To Harry Watson, from Clara. _Three kisses." He pointed out the engraving on the back.

"It's a new phone, the model less than six months old. The engraving and the fact it is covered in scratches says it has had a previous owner who didn't look after it very well. You're on an Army pension relocating off-world, you wouldn't treat your one luxury possession like that. So, Harry Watson. Clearly a family member, but not your father. This is a young man's gadget. It could be a cousin, but you are leaving Earth because you are unable to find cheap accommodation, so it's unlikely you have an extended family. Brother it is."

"Now then, who's Clara? Three kisses says it's a romantic attachment, expense of the phone says wife, not girlfriend. The fact he is just giving it away means it's a marriage in trouble. If she had left him, he would have kept it – sentiment, people do. But he gave it to you, he wanted to get rid of it. He left her. He wants you to stay in touch, yet you won't go to him for financial help. That means you have a problem with him. Maybe you liked his wife, maybe you don't like his drinking."

At this, John cut in. "How can you _possibly_ know about the drinking?"

Sherlock Holmes smiled. "It's easy if you know where to look."

He showed John the phone's charge point. "Tiny scuff marks all around. He goes to charge it each night, but his hands are shaking. You never see a sober man's phone with those marks, never see a drunk's without it."

John stared at him, taking back his phone. "You said I was leaving Earth to prove some point."

"You have family who would be prepared to help you out – the phone shows that much. From the text you sent it seems you also have a partner that you care a great deal about. Yet you won't stay on Earth and accept charity. That either means you don't care as much about her as you make out, which would make you a _very_ good liar, or you simply want to prove that you can stand on your own two feet. Given that you accepted the Moon assignment in the first place, which says you have a strong sense of duty, I'd go with the latter."

With his deduction finished, the man turned back to the window, leaving John to stew for a moment.

"You read my text. Off my phone."

Apparently this did not warrant a reply, because Sherlock Holmes just looked briefly at John, raised an eyebrow and returned his gaze to the window.

"How did you even know I was travelling? You only saw me for a minute or so in the lift this morning."

"Staying in that god-awful hotel last night and coming to breakfast that early with a bag that was obviously hand luggage could only mean you were flying out this morning. Given the time you were at breakfast the only flight that matches is this Mars shuttle."

John gave a chuckle. "That's incredible."

At that, Sherlock Holmes turned back to him sharply. "Really? Do you mean that?" He looked genuinely surprised.

"Of course it was. It was extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary." John was aware he was gushing, but he was too impressed to care.

"That's not what people usually say," Sherlock said, sounding slightly scathing.

John was taken aback a little. "What do people usually say?"

"_Piss off,_" Sherlock said, with a sardonic smile. John couldn't help it, he giggled. Sherlock's smile broadened into a grin as he looked at John, then turned back to the window.

_Maybe the trip won't be so bad after all_, John thought, looking at him. He got the feeling that whatever this journey turned out to be, it wasn't going to be boring.

-oooOooo-


	2. Chapter 2

It took a lot less time than John had imagined for his premonition to be confirmed. Now that they were firmly in space and the travel tablets had kicked in he felt better, and decided that a drink was in order. He turned to his neighbour.

"Fancy a drink?"

In response he got an amused look. "Have you ever been in the bar of one of these?"

John looked dubious. "Surely it can't be that bad. I was in the military, remember."

Sherlock gave him a short, hard stare before conceding. "Very well."

As they entered the rear of the craft John was unpleasantly reminded of the rough local that his squad occasionally visited during his time on the Moon. There had been a lot of trouble there and this place looked little different, space craft or not.

It was dingy and the smell of stale beer mingled with the illicit cigarette smoke into an unsavoury atmosphere. Most seats were taken, the clientele having a seasoned look about them already even though they had been in space less than an hour. Miners, mostly, John figured, on their way out for their regular three-month shifts. Other than the shifty-looking man behind the bar there was no sign of any crew. What remained of the no-smoking signs that once adorned the walls had been heavily defaced. It didn't look like anyone had cleaned up in here for weeks. The place breathed trouble.

_Enter at your own risk_, John thought as he made his way to the bar, Sherlock following shortly behind. The shifty barman came over, looking him up and down, and gave a grunt to signal that he was ready to take their order. John tried to put on a pleasant face and ignore the state of the place and its host. The bar itself looked like it had the standard metal surface like the ones on the military convoys, but it was hard to tell under all the grime. John tried not to touch it.

"Pint of lager, please," he said, turning to Sherlock. "What are you having?"

Sherlock moved next to him at the bar, his impeccable looks incongruous with the state of this place. He briefly looked over the row of spirits at the back of the counter.

"Macallan please. But not from _that_ bottle." He nodded to indicate the bottle on the rack, and the barman narrowed his eyes.

"And what, pray, is wrong with _that_ bottle?" He was mimicking Sherlock's speech, and a few heads around the bar and adjoining tables turned to see what was happening. Most looked less than friendly, and John was beginning to wonder if coming to this place had been a mistake.

Sherlock remained unperturbed, calmly regarding the bar man. "It's been cut with something cheap. There are clear signs of tampering around the neck and besides, the colour is wrong."

The barman gave him a long, mean look, which Sherlock returned calmly. Then he reached under the bar and produced an unopened bottle. Sherlock's gaze never left him as the man filled a clean glass with ice and poured the whisky, then pulled John a pint. The sound of glass hitting metal as he put the two drinks down on the bar far too hard spoke volumes.

John had watched the exchange with some trepidation, all senses on the alert. Everything told him they were treading on a knife edge here, and his preoccupation with what the other patrons as well as the bar man were doing made him slow; before he could pay, Sherlock had taken out his wallet and handed the bar man a twenty-dollar note, dryly adding, "I'll have the change."

John made to protest, but Sherlock cut him off quietly. "Leave it." He handed John his drink, and as John accepted he looked at Sherlock's face. There was no mistaking the twinkling in Sherlock's eyes. He's actually enjoying this, John thought incredulously. He wondered what kind of madman thought it would be fun to defame the barman in a place like this.

They made their way to the last remaining empty table, in a smoky corner right towards the rear of the room. Almost without thinking John positioned himself with his back to the wall, overlooking the other patrons and with a good view of the bar. Sherlock, on the other hand, pointedly moved his chair so that he faced only John, his back turned upon the barman and the rest of the room.

John lifted his glass with a dubious look on his face. "Cheers, I think. I'm sorry for making you come here."

"No need to apologise. It is proving to be an interesting diversion." Sherlock tipped his glass briefly towards John's and took a sip, then put the glass back down with a small satisfied smile.

John wondered what the man did for a living that made going into a dodgy bar seem like an _interesting diversion_. He was about to ask when he noticed that a group of men a few tables away were obviously talking about them. The way they kept surreptitiously pointing in their direction, accompanied by the furtive looks of ill intent made John sit up, alert.

He didn't have his gun. It was hidden in his main luggage, no doubt still making its way to Mars. If he was lucky he'd get it on arrival, if he wasn't he would have to wait another two or three days for it. As it was, he was unarmed and feeling acutely vulnerable. His shoulder still ached and he wasn't sure how much use he would be if it came to a fight. Even so, he was determined not to go down lightly should it come to that.

He looked back at Sherlock, who was watching him intently. Quietly, Sherlock said, "trouble?"

John nodded, just a little bit. "Think so." Sherlock only raised an eyebrow in response, picked up his drink and took a slow sip. "How many?"

"Five," John responded. "But they're only thinking about it."

Sherlock put his glass back down and looked at it for a moment, thoughtful. "Stay where you are and don't do anything stupid."

John stared at his companion, surprise battling it out with offence. "_What?_ Mister… I mean Sherlock, I got you in here in the first place. I am not going to sit here watching while they beat the crap out of you." He managed to keep his voice down, but only just.

A slow and altogether worrying smile spread across Sherlock's face. "Oh, I'd like to see them try."

At that moment their argument was cut short as one of the group of five men got up and swaggered over to their table, his moves looking a little odd and bouncy with the low gravity. _It's hard to look like a heavy when you aren't, in fact, heavy_, John couldn't help thinking. Even so, he wouldn't underestimate this guy.

The man stopped at the side of Sherlock, put his right hand on the table and leaned over menacingly. "Hey, posh boy. You're in my seat."

Sherlock rolled his eyes, and John was sure he muttered "predictable" before turning to face the man, looking him over briefly. John looked at the unlikely combination – Sherlock, elegant, stylish and slender verging on underweight, looking completely out of place here. His opponent was at least a head shorter than Sherlock, stocky, muscular, overweight and drunk.

Unfortunately John could see that Sherlock was no match for the sheer muscle of the guy, and he steeled himself for a fight. "Leave him alone. The seats are here for everyone."

Surprised, Sherlock turned and looked at John. The miner sneered. "Oh, defending him, are you. Afraid the pretty suit might get scuffed?" He turned to Sherlock again, leaning further towards him. His face was threateningly close to Sherlock's now and there was no mistaking his intentions. The taller man regarded him calmly, not even blinking.

The miner narrowed his eyes. "Well, you shouldn't be taking people's seats if you can't fight your own fights." Taking his hand off the table he pushed Sherlock roughly on the shoulder.

What happened next went so quickly that it took John a moment to catch up. Sherlock jumped up, pushing the chair back with such force that it went flying across the floor, following a weird-looking arc in the low-g environment. In the same move he raised his fist, punching the man squarely on the chin as he came up.

The miner was caught completely unawares and for a second looked stunned, stumbling backwards while clutching his jaw. It was all the time Sherlock needed, as he delivered what looked to John like some kind of flat-handed karate punch to the guy's solar plexus. The man doubled over with a gurgling noise and collapsed towards the floor, travelling in a comical slow motion, gradually sagging backwards until he came to rest a few feet from the table that he had started from. There he remained, gagging and fighting for breath.

Sherlock gave the man a look of utter disdain, straightening his jacket as he turned back to John. Then he retrieved his chair and sat back down. _He didn't even look to see what the other men would do_, John thought.

He didn't need to. The men at the other table sat and gaped for some time, then a couple of them got up to help their fallen comrade. After a while they managed to lift him back up onto his chair where he sat, looking somewhat green and coughing occasionally. It didn't look as if anyone from the group was planning anything else, John observed, although they were muttering amongst themselves in hushed tones.

He looked at Sherlock who was sitting there completely unruffled, looking smug if anything, and slowly drinking his whisky. "Well," said John. "That was spectacular."

Sherlock briefly raised a dismissive eyebrow. "Hm. It was predictable." Then he gave John a quizzical look. "You didn't need to defend me, though. You have no loyalty to me. You don't even know me."

John shrugged. "I don't like a bully. Besides, I got you into this mess in the first place." As an afterthought he added, "Anyway, you couldn't have taken all five of them on in one go."

Sherlock looked at him a moment longer, his face unreadable, then returned his attention to his glass. John wondered if he was wrong, whether Sherlock could have dealt with them all, or whether he would have needed John's help. He was beginning to believe that there was a lot more to this 'posh boy' than met the eye. After a while he remembered his beer.

They drank in silence for some time, Sherlock appearing to have no interest in any further conversation. John was dying to find out what Sherlock did for a living, but he wasn't sure how the question would go down, or even how to ask it. "So, do you often get to beat people up?" just didn't seem to have the right ring to it.

Instead, John took another good look at their surroundings. The table was no cleaner than the bar, and he dreaded to think what his sleeve was stuck on when he lifted his glass off the surface. It struck him that Sherlock had so far managed not to touch the table at all. Even after the scuffle he still looked impeccable.

He moved on to contemplating his beer, not wishing to look at the room or he table any longer. The beer wasn't bad, as lager went, even if it was a little flat. Other than that there was nothing remarkable about it, and he quickly ran out of observations. All he could hope was that it hadn't been cut with anything worse than tap water. Momentarily at a loss for something to say or do he just concentrated on drinking it, without trying to think too much about anything at all, wondering how long Sherlock could keep quiet for.

In the end it was Sherlock who broke the silence. Suddenly focusing on him, he said, "So. You've got questions." It was a statement of fact, not a query. John decided now was as good a time as any.

"Yeah. What is it exactly you do for a living?"

Sherlock smiled a lopsided smile. "What do you think?"

John thought about his answer for a while. "I'd have said special police, blade runner, probably." He hesitated.

"But…?"

John waved his hand vaguely. "You just don't strike me as police." _More like a replicant_, he added to himself, but he didn't voice the thought.

"I'm a consulting detective. Only one in the universe. I invented the job."

"And what exactly does that mean?" It made no sense to John.

"It means that when the Interplanetary police are out of their depth, which is always, they call on me." Sherlock sat back again and took a long sip.

John laughed. He couldn't keep the disbelief from his voice when he said, "You're having me on. Interpol don't consult amateurs."

"You're right, they don't," Sherlock responded without a trace of humour. With one last draught he finished his glass and put it down. "You've seen what I do. I am not an _amateur_, Doctor."

_Sore point_, John thought. It struck him that Sherlock seemed a bit of a diva for all his apparent sophistication. Still, with a mind like that it wasn't all that surprising. He rescued the situation by getting the next round of drinks. To his immense satisfaction the five men at the table behind them pretended he didn't exist as he walked past, and the barman poured the whisky from the proper bottle without prompting.

John returned to the table and put Sherlock's drink down. "You've got the barman well trained already," he said. Sherlock smirked and picked up the glass. "I hadn't even started on _him_. He's a weasel. At a guess he is smuggling something, drugs probably, hidden in the fridges. He owes a lot of money."

John blinked, "Oh." He was quiet for a while, digesting this. "Are you going to, ehm, you know, confront him about it?"

Sherlock stared at his drink. "Probably not. As long as he doesn't try to serve me sub-standard whisky again. Or maybe I will, it might be diverting. Although it would shut the bar down, so not before our approach to Mars."

_Definitely not police_, John concluded. He still wasn't convinced that the guy wasn't a replicant though. He was simply too weird to be true. Combined with his extraordinary powers of observation and the lighting reactions the Tyrell slogan _'more human than human'_ fit rather too comfortably. He shirked away from the thought.

Instead, he went for safer ground. "So, are you visiting Mars on a case?"

But Sherlock seemed distracted, lost in thought, still staring at his drink. It took such a long time for him to answer that John was beginning to believe that he hadn't heard him. He cleared his throat, unobtrusively, seeing if he could get a reaction.

Sherlock looked up. "Hm? Yes, a case. Very much so." He looked back at his glass again and John wondered if that was it for the day. Just as he had come to the conclusion that Sherlock was not going to say anything else on the subject the taller man suddenly sat up and focused on him.

"You're a doctor. In fact you're an army doctor." John nodded. He wasn't sure where this was going.

Sherlock continued, "Any good?"

That got John right in the professional pride. He squared his shoulders and looked the other man straight in the face. "_Very_ good."

If Sherlock noticed John's hurt feelings he didn't react. "Seen a lot of injuries then, violent deaths?"

John nodded, remembering too many incidents on Earth, countless horrific injuries in the eternal war zones of the old Middle East, assimilated still only in name but never in spirit to the United Nations, or so it had seemed during his time there. The friends that were carried on makeshift stretchers into the camp surgery on the Moon, as ambush after ambush weakened their position and dwindled their numbers. He had saved them, most of them, at least. He could never forget the ones that he hadn't. He just nodded.

"A bit of trouble, too…?"

John didn't need to answer that. He just glanced at his shoulder. "Yes," he said. "Enough for a lifetime."

Sherlock regarded him for a moment longer, then nimbly fished his communicator from inside his jacket and flicked it open. "Want to see some more?"

John looked at him. It seemed to him that he was being offered a lifeline, something that could save him from being dragged down into the boredom of eking it out on an army pension with nothing else to do but applying for locum work when he arrived on Mars. Even if this was only for a few days, a week, it would be so much better than that. He felt a little of his old sense of adventure return, that well-known buzz, a feeling of opportunity. He didn't have to think twice.

"Oh God, yes."

Sherlock moved over quickly, planting his chair right next to John with an elegant flourish. He didn't look remotely unbalanced in the low gravity, John noticed, in fact it seemed to suit him. His movements looked more cat-like than ever.

John had to suppress the urge to move a little away from him, though. It didn't look like Sherlock had any concept of personal space, because he had moved in so close he was nearly touching him. However, before John could get too uncomfortable about it his attention was caught by the picture on Sherlock's screen.

The remains were those of a woman, he could tell that much, but only just. The amount of damage on her was simply astounding. John looked at it in horror for a few moments, then turned to Sherlock. "Who did this?"

Instead of answering, Sherlock called up another image. It was hard to tell the gender of this victim and John couldn't look at it for very long. "Jesus. What's doing this? Who are these people?"

Sherlock called up another photograph. This time John had to look very closely, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Finally he pulled back and looked at Sherlock. "A dog. That was a dog. Was it a real dog?"

Sherlock flipped his communicator shut and shook his head. "No, it was an animoid. There are two more human victims for which I haven't seen photographs yet. They have kept hold of the bodies of the last three victims, and we can examine them in person when we get to Mars." He put the thing back in his pocket.

"The victims are unrelated in any technical sense of the word. The murders have been committed all over the Mars colony in the last month, with no set pattern to them. But here is the interesting bit. _They were all committed by different individuals._"

John stared at him in disbelief. "No. How can that be?"

In response Sherlock smiled briefly. "They were all killed by replicants."

_"What?"_ John couldn't believe what he was hearing. After everything that had happened twenty or so years ago, even now referred to as the Roy Batty debacle, this was simply unbelievable. Countless reassurance campaigns from the Tyrell Corporation to calm down public opinion had followed the death of old Tyrell. The rhetoric had continued year after year, the guarantees getting more self-assured with every new generation of Nexus replicants. _Replicants are useful. Replicants are emotionally stable. Replicants are peaceful. Replicants are safe_.

"How?" was all he could say. Sherlock was just observing him, waiting for him to come to grips with the information. Now he shrugged.

"Apparently, the replicants were known to the victims, and as far as we know they were trusted by them. It appears they turned unexpectedly violent. There is no pattern in the source of the replicants, they are from different batches, bought from a variety of suppliers, and were created for different purposes. The only thing that links them together so far is that they were Tyrell-made, and all less than a year old."

John raised his eyebrows. "Wow. So much for the Tyrell propaganda."

"Hm."

John stared at the table, lost in thought for some time. Just as he became aware that it had got awfully quiet around them, Sherlock suddenly spun round in his seat, arm outstretched, and seemed to grab something. John looked up, surprised, only to see the blade of a knife arc its way gracefully through the air in front of him, missing his face by a hair's breadth, and burying itself into the table an inch away from his hand with a dull thud.

For a moment he just stared at it, mesmerised, then he forced his eyes away from the knife trying to work out where it had come from. Looking over to where Sherlock had been he was surprised to see that the tall man was off his chair, kneeling down with his right leg on the back of one of the miners who was lying face down on the floor. Sherlock held the man's arm twisted high up on his back and the miner was groaning in pain, effectively immobilised.

John jumped up, ready to help, but Sherlock stopped him with a wave of his free hand. "No need, Doctor. I think I have things under control." He leaned over and whispered something in the man's ear. He took his time and John wondered whether it was an elaborate threat or a compromising deduction, and whether there was a difference. In any case, the man sagged noticably when Sherlock had finished.

Sherlock stood up and let the miner get to his feet. The man scrambled up and practically ran back to the table, not looking behind him and shaking visibly. He got a shock when he realised that Sherlock had followed. John smiled to see a grown man jump nearly a foot in the air with surprise, made to look even worse by the lack of gravity. Sherlock, on the other hand, just gave the guy a disdainful look, after which he turned to the other men around the table.

"Gentlemen, I have been _very_ tolerant of your interferences so far today. However, I promise you that the next moron to inconvenience me will break a limb."

He regarded them a moment, letting the words sink in, then turned on his heels and returned to John, who sniggered. "Couldn't have said it better myself."

Sherlock looked at him, surprised, still serious from the confrontation. Then, suddenly, he broke into a wide grin which lit up his whole face. "Well. They _were_ being moronic."

John giggled, getting very silly now. "Any particular limb you had in mind?"

"Oh, I don't know," Sherlock replied, just loud enough for the men to overhear. He looked serious again, but there was a wicked glint in his eye. "Upper arm, probably, just above the elbow. Extremely painful as well as long-winded to heal. That would also ensure the maximum time spent in an awkward cast. _Very_ inconvenient when trying to keep down a job as a miner. And the drugs would prohibit any alcohol consumption for _weeks_."

John smiled wryly. He couldn't help but admire the guy's grasp of anatomy and he had no doubt that it wasn't an empty threat. Even so he had no wish to see things get to that point. He looked at his watch, trying to make sense of the time difference between Earth Central Time and the ITC's self-adopted ship time. By anyone's reckoning it was coming up to lunch time, and he very much doubted that any of the crew would be brave enough to serve them their food in here.

He got up. "How about trying the lunch?"

Sherlock shook his head. "No. I tend not to eat when I'm on a case. I find digestion slows me down." Even so, he finished his drink and stood up to follow John, who tried not to look too incredulous.

Before they went Sherlock reached over and pulled the knife out of the thin laminate of the table, studying it a moment. It was a simple flick-bladed pen knife, with a long tapered point and an old-fashioned ivory handle, sharp and no doubt lethal in the right hands. He closed it nimbly, flicked it into the air, caught it and slipped it into his pocket in the same motion. "I'll keep that."

Walking out of the bar was like walking out of a gloomy cave into the sunlight of a summer's day. Suddenly this part of the ship seemed welcoming, bright, and friendly. John took a deep breath, surprisingly relieved to have escaped in one piece, and made his way to their seats.

Sherlock slipped into his seat by the window and John sat down too. Once more Sherlock seemed to have gone into his shell, as almost immediately he was entirely focused on his communicator, apparently resuming the furiously typed conversation that he had been engaged in at the hotel, and seemingly unaware of John's existence.

John shrugged mentally; he wasn't on the lookout for a best mate after all. All he hoped was that the hint at getting him physically involved in this case had been sincere, that the man wasn't just humouring him. But then, Sherlock didn't seem the kind of person to humour anyone so he had to assume the invitation was genuine.

While waiting for the food he had a look at the in-flight magazine. Since he didn't envisage returning to the bar any time soon he wondered what other entertainment might be available. He flicked his way past the glossy advertainment features to the passenger information section. The aft of the ship was huge, obviously built at a time when luxury space travel was the up and coming thing, even if that had never really taken shape. There was space for all sorts apart from a disreputable bar there, he thought, looking at the ship's layout on the page and trying to work out what was what.

As it worked out the only things that were actually advertised were a games arcade and a cinema. The rest of the space wasn't designated as anything on the schematic. Computer games had never been John's interest so he disregarded the mention of the arcade, although four days of being in this place might bring him to that yet. He looked for the cinema listings. _Consult your nearest vid screen for today's showings_, it said in the magazine.

Well, that was no use. The nearest vid screen was cracked and looked as if it had been like that for years. It flashed green occasionally, suggesting that the mech team were in denial about it, hoping it might switch itself back on if they left it long enough. He looked at Sherlock.

"Do you want to see what's in the cinema later on?"

Sherlock turned to him. "Hm?"

John showed him the magazine. "Look. There's a cinema here. I just wondered if you wanted to come along."

Sherlock looked at him as if he was from a different planet. "Why?"

"Why not? It would break up the journey. And it's got to be better than the bar."

"Sorry, not interested."

"Don't you watch films?"

"Not as a rule."

"Cinema in space," John said, revelling in the memory. "That used to be the only enjoyable thing about the military convoys. You've got to try it if you've never been."

Sherlock was frowning now, bemused. "No I don't."

"Why not? Are you really going to spend four days bashing that communicator and staring out of the window at the void?"

The look Sherlock was giving him spoke volumes. He was regarding him now as if he was a completely different species. John didn't need to be a consulting detective to understand that nobody had recently, or ever, asked this man to come and see a film.

It made him wonder about a host of other things, too: whether he had friends, a partner, what he did to switch off, or whether he did switch off at all. He parked the questions for future reference, with the uneasy notion that all of this, too, fitted the profile of a replicant rather too well.

"Come on, Sherlock. You might enjoy this."

Sherlock looked at him for a moment longer, then seemed to reach a decision. "Fine."

At that moment lunch arrived. It looked, if possible, worse than the breakfast John had struggled with this morning. He picked at it while Sherlock had a coffee. John wondered if he ever ate at all. He was just working his way through the worse Battenberg slice he had ever tasted in his life when there was an announcement on the tannoy.

"All passengers are reminded that it is now a legal requirement to obtain a valid Voight-Kampff Test certificate before entry to the Mars colony. Please ensure you arrange with the cabin crew to take the test in room C4 on the aft deck."

In all the excitement of the morning, John had forgotten about the new regulations that specified the test had to be taken by all civilian travellers between colonies. He'd only had to take this test once before, when he joined the army, and he remembered his test as being quick and simple. As a naturally empathic person he was easily identified as truly human.

He couldn't help himself though, and he briefly glanced over to gauge Sherlock's reaction. He was a little taken aback when his eyes met Sherlock's, who was looking at him with some amusement, obviously having guessed his thoughts.

"Maybe I should point out that I _am_ human."

John cleared his throat, uncomfortable with being put on the spot like that. Sherlock was still watching him, and he realised that he was going to have to give an answer.

"I never said you weren't." That, at least, was true.  
Sherlock smiled briefly. "You thought it though. In fact you thought it several times today."

John couldn't deny it, especially since it had clearly been obvious to Sherlock. On the other hand, he thought, he couldn't be the first to have considered the possibility. "Do people usually assume you're a replicant?"

"Now and then, yes."

John smiled and shook his head. "Yes, I did wonder. Especially the way you seemed to enjoy that godawful coffee they served at the hotel."

Sherlock looked at him, even more amused than before. "I managed to get proper whisky in the ship's bar. Do you really think I couldn't acquire some real coffee in an overpriced Earth hotel?

John laughed at that, briefly. "Of course. What was it, waiter cheating on his girlfriend?"

"No. I simply encouraged them to think I was a Federal Standards agent working undercover. It wasn't that hard."

John looked at him in admiration. "Brilliant. That's just brilliant. Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you're an idiot."

He just gaped at Sherlock. He didn't really know how to respond to that.

"Oh don't look like that, practically everybody is."

It wasn't worth commenting, John thought, although he raised his eyebrows in offence. The guy's manners left much to be desired. However, before he could get too much into a sulk, Sherlock jumped ahead again.

"Let's investigate this cinema, then, if you have quite finished with lunch."


	3. Chapter 3

Once more the two men made their way to the aft of the ship, but this time they walked straight past the bar to the areas beyond. They hadn't got very far when John came to a sudden halt.

Around the corner from the bar, just to the right after the games room, were three display windows. They were dimly lit with surrounding red lights in a fashion that only meant one thing all over the known universe. Inside the first two, suggestively seated on small metal chairs, were two young female figures. They were heavily made up and dressed in a few tiny garments that left very little to the imagination. The last window contained a tanned, very fit-looking male figure wearing only a bow tie and a very tight pair of shorts.

Upon seeing John and Sherlock, the red-haired woman behind the middle window slid off her chair and came to the front of the cubicle. She turned to Sherlock, giving him a very suggestive look over, and pressed her body against the glass, writhing invitingly.

John stood gaping, embarrassed, not knowing where to look. He turned to Sherlock to see the man's reaction, and was surprised to see him approach the woman calmly, looking at her.

John cleared his throat. "Sherlock."

Sherlock didn't answer, but stepped a little closer, observing the redhead. In return she pressed her body closer to the glass, pushing her full breasts upwards as she did so. Looking Sherlock in the eye, she slowly licked her lips, then licked the glass. John couldn't help but notice she had a tongue piercing. He suddenly felt very hot.

He was getting more and more uncomfortable while Sherlock just stood there, fingertips of one hand lightly touching the glass, studying the woman as if she was some interesting specimen. Suddenly he crouched down, his eyes now level with the woman's crotch, his attention unwavering. In response the woman started to grind her crotch into the glass.

"Ehm, Sherlock, what are you doing?"

Still there was no response from the taller man, and John was getting worried now. He didn't know this guy at all, really, and for all he knew he had some kind of voyeuristic fetish. He was beginning to feel that he was intruding on a private moment. Just as he had decided that he was better off just carrying on on his own, Sherlock straightened up and looked at him.

"Yes. Interesting."

"Sorry?" John was having some trouble focusing. To make matters worse, the pretty brunette nearest to him had begun to make some very suggestive gestures and movements directed very clearly at him. He was trying to ignore her, but struggling. The way she was caressing her own breasts was distracting him more than he would like to admit. He cleared his throat again and tried to concentrate on Sherlock.

"Sorry, what's interesting?"

"They're replicants, obviously. Nexus 7, you can tell by the musculature here," Sherlock pointed to the woman's belly region, "and around the neck. They never got it completely right with that range. These are the basic pleasure models. But they're old. Most of these were retired years ago, even though the Tyrell Corporation didn't limit the lifespan after the Nexus 6 generation."

John blinked. "Oh." He didn't really want to look any closer, but from where he was standing he couldn't really see any difference in the woman's body to that of a normal person. She just looked like a very attractive young lady to him, who was moving around in a way that nobody had done at him for a very long time, if ever. Sarah certainly hadn't. Replicants or not, he found them both entirely distracting.

Sherlock, on the other hand, seemed immune. He had moved closer to the woman in the centre again, studying her eyes this time. She was looking deeply into his, kissing the glass and pressing her perfectly shaped body hard against it.

"They've been updated," Sherlock observed, seemingly oblivious to the woman's actions. "Someone has been keeping these going well beyond their expected lifespan. The eyes are Nexus 8"

John found it difficult not to stare. The fabric of the teensy bra – if that is what it could be called - that the woman was wearing went practically transparent as she was making love to the glass. He found himself breaking out into a sweat and struggling to keep his breathing level.

"Sherlock, it's all very interesting, but can we move on please?"

Sherlock turned round and looked at John with a distracted frown. It took him a moment to register John's obvious discomfort. His expression immediately changed into one of amusement. "Really, Doctor? I thought you'd be used to seeing the human body in all its bare glory. I'm surprised."

Once more John cleared his throat. He really didn't appreciate being embarrassed this publicly. "Yeah. Well. Their behaviour is not quite what I'd expect from my female patients."

"Hm," was all Sherlock said, moving onto the male figure in the last cubicle. He gave the man a cursory glance over. John thought there was some level of appreciation in it, but it was hard to tell whether Sherlock was appreciating the figure of the replicant, or the workmanship that had gone into maintaining him. The man, in return, put his hand against the glass where Sherlock's fingers touched, and tried to get his attention by moving his hips in what John considered a most unsettling manner.

John was beginning to wonder if Sherlock intended to study the replicant in more personal detail, and whether he should just leave, when Sherlock gave a last appreciative tap on the glass and turned to him. "Let's find this cinema of yours."

They continued down the corridor, leaving the replicants behind them. John breathed a sigh of relief, adjusting his collar as he was walking along and trying to look casual. Sherlock wasn't taking any notice, seemingly lost in thought.

The corridor they now followed was bleak, narrow, and with very low ceilings. Along the right-hand side were a few doors with small red signs reading 'Crew Only'. The left-hand side lacked even those. Faded adverts for sushi and Coca-cola hung on the walls, and a couple of vending machines were standing forlornly along one side. The only appealing thing about the place was the brightly lit entrance to the cinema at the end.

John wasn't sure what to expect of the cinema after their disastrous visit to the bar, but he was pleasantly surprised. Although there were only two showings per day the feature varied daily, and more importantly the films looked reasonable. Even better, the young lady who was manning the ticket office was genuinely nice as she was giving him all the information he asked for, to the point where John wondered if he should offer to buy her a drink when they arrived on Mars.

He turned to Sherlock, who was studying the film posters in some detail. "Ocean's Eleven. That's only just out. It's a remake, mind you. Did you ever see the one they made in the noughties?"

"No."

"Well, you might like it. It's pretty complicated if it's anything like the original. I didn't figure it out right until the very end."

Sherlock gave John a dubious look, but didn't say anything. John got their tickets for the late afternoon show and they slowly walked back to their seats in silence.

Sherlock seemed fascinated by the bulkhead separating the space ship from, as John assumed, the void outside. He tapped it in a few places and measured the width of the corridor twice by pacing it. When they passed the replicants again he completely ignored them, to John's surprise. Instead, he walked to the beginning of the corridor that led past the bar to the passenger compartment, stood with his back flat against the bulkhead and finally paced the exact distance between the bulkhead and the passenger compartment as they made their way back. Then, without a word, he sat down in his seat and started reading the in-flight magazine.

John waited for a while for Sherlock to explain his odd behaviour, but when it became obvious that no explanation was forthcoming he decided to ask. "What was all that about?"

It took a while for Sherlock to respond. When he did, he looked at John as if he couldn't understand why he was interested. "I'm not sure. It might be nothing." He returned his eyes to the magazine.

"Try me," John said. He was curious. It was obvious to him that Sherlock wasn't used to anyone taking an interest in his researches.

Sherlock looked up again, a little surprised. He hesitated a moment, then seemed to reach a decision. He showed John the page of the in-flight magazine he had been studying. John recognised it as the one which showed the floor plan of the ship.

"Look at the aft of the ship on here." He pointed to the map with a long index finger. John remembered thinking it was a huge space when he had looked at it before. It suddenly struck him that the area they had seen this afternoon had been nothing of that size.

Before he could say anything, Sherlock cut across. "Now we didn't see all of that, and there's a good reason for it."

John looked at him questioningly. "First class accommodation behind the bulkhead," Sherlock said with a slight smile. "No access for those in cattle class."

"Can't be," John said. "First class is in the front. I walked past it."

Sherlock shook his head. "No, that's the business class section. That's just a more luxurious version of what we're in. It's quite different from first class. Trust me, I've travelled in there."

John said nothing. He kept forgetting Sherlock lived in a different world from him.

Sherlock pointed at the map again. "I've been in first class on a number of occasions. I find it tedious. And when I get bored, I walk. I have paced that part of the ship tens of times. I know every measurement of the rooms and corridors. And we also know the full measurements of the whole ship, because they're in here." He tapped the magazine.

"Now, I have just paced the exact length of the aft section up to the bulkhead. We know the size of the front section, it is easily calculated from the number of rows and the space allocated to each row, and the cockpit and entrance hall are standard on a ship like this, six metres in length. But if I put it all together I lose three metres."

John looked at him. "And what does that mean?"

"Not sure yet," Sherlock replied. "I need more data."

He wouldn't speak about it after that, going completely silent and resuming his watchful vigil of the stars out of the tiny window. John resigned himself to a book he had brought which proved to be less interesting than he had hoped.

Ten minutes before the film was about to start they made their way back to the cinema, after John managed to regain Sherlock's attention with some effort. Sherlock ignored both the replicants and the corridor this time and John marvelled at his complete indifference to the two things that had him completely absorbed only an hour or so ago.

"You lost your interest in those replicants quickly enough."

Sherlock stopped in the middle of the corridor and looked at him. "No I haven't."

"How come you didn't even give them a second glance? They were the most interesting thing in the world not two minutes ago."

"One hour and forty-six minutes ago, to be exact. I have all the data I need from them, and from the bulkhead."

John gave a short laugh. It still seemed to him that Sherlock was more likely to be a replicant than a real human being. Nobody could possibly be like this in real life.

"I'm getting some popcorn. Do you want any?"

Sherlock looked at him with a face full of incredulity. "Really? Why?"

John shrugged. "It's what you do, isn't it? Have popcorn when you go to see a film?"

Sherlock just raised his eyebrows in disbelief, which John took to be a no. He went to the vending machines and acquired some overpriced and stale-looking popcorn and a fizzy drink, while Sherlock remained at the cinema entrance, considering the film poster. After giving up on getting any change out of the machine John returned.

"Damn machine short-changed me," he frothed at Sherlock, who merely stared at him.

"Not entirely unexpected."

They went in and found their seats. The cinema was already filling up with all the other passengers that were desperate for anything to do on board. He was intent on enjoying himself, but he couldn't help notice Sherlock was looking almost more out of place here than he had been in the seedy bar.

"Are you OK? This is meant to be fun, you know."

"Yes, fine," Sherlock said, looking restless. He took something out of his pocket. It was the flier for the film, which he must have picked up from the ticket office. He began to fidget with it, turning it this way and that and looking at the characters' faces.

"You're not going to be able to work out the story from the poster, I think," John said with a smile.

Sherlock looked back at him. "What? Oh, the story is obvious of course. This guy, clearly some kind of gang leader, probably Mr. Ocean, has an issue with the guy in the back, at a guess he's run off with his wife or landed him in jail, or both, or something equally trivial, and he's decided to take his revenge by, oh I don't know, probably robbing the other guy's casino or something, he looks like a casino owner and it's clearly set in Vegas so that's as good a guess as any. But if that's the case there would be lots of security, so he gets the help of these ten other people who his best mate, that one, helps him put together to pull off some type of long con, the true extent of which the viewer is left in the dark about right up to the very last moment, making you believe it is much more complicated than it really is. They succeed, of course, and he probably gets his wife back in the process. It looks crass enough for that."

John stared at him with his mouth open for a moment. "Eh. Yeah. And you never saw the original."

"No."

"Did you see the 1960s version?"

"Clearly not."

"Oh." John really didn't know what to say. Eventually he settled on, "Well. We may as well go back to the bar and get threatened a bit more."

"Why?" Sherlock said, looking genuinely surprised.

"Well, there is no point in watching it if you already know what is going to happen."

"Why not? It might clear up one or two details. And I am curious how they will kill _him_ off." He pointed at one of the characters.

"You'll be wrong there. Nobody dies. It's not that kind of film."

"Really?" Sherlock gave John a look of amused superiority.

"That's got to be Linus. There is no way they'd kill hm off. He's in the next two films. He's kind of essential to the plot."

John was just getting settled into his argument when the lights in the cinema were dimmed and the adverts started. He sat back and immersed himself in the 4D experience. He was now looking forward to seeing the film almost as much as he was looking forward to being proved right about Linus. Next to him Sherlock Holmes sunk into his chair and stretched out his long legs with a look of what John thought was feigned boredom, and sighed.

-ooOoo-

"I can't believe they did that. They killed him. They actually killed him."

John was walking along the corridor as they were making their way back to the passenger compartment. Beside him Sherlock was keeping his silence, his smug smile the only indication of this minor victory.

"I don't understand how they could do that. They've totally mangled the plot for the rest of the films. It makes no sense."

Sherlock's smile only broadened. "You could just admit you were wrong, Doctor."

John fumed in silence for a while as they entered the passenger area and sat down. Sherlock settled in his window seat, looking quietly pleased. When John didn't show any sign of conceding he returned his attention to his communicator.

After a while John had cooled down enough to ask the obvious question. "All right. How could you tell that was going to happen, just from a film poster?"

Sherlock turned to John, regarding him a moment with unreserved smugness, then took the flier from the inside pocket of his jacket. He pulled down the food tray and smoothed the paper out on its surface.

"It's easy. This being the second remake of the film, the script writers would be looking for an element of surprise. The obvious choice is to kill off one of the characters. With this kind of film, especially if there is a sequel, they are not going to kill the main ones. So, Ocean and Rusty, although they are at the front and are the focus of the poster, are safe. So is the woman as she is an essential plot device, and I'm sure she will be central to the next two films anyway."

"Terry Benedict, at the back here, can't die because he has to be seen to live with the pain of defeat. So let's consider the other ten."

"Reuben and Saul are too old to be of interest for killing off. The audience would be expecting it, and so the shock value is too small. The brothers Malloy, although annoying, are essential to the working of the team. Besides, if you consider how they are positioned on the poster they are clearly in no immediate danger. See, they are put with Frank, Basher and Livingston in a comfortable-looking group, almost innocuous. Yen barely says more than ten words during the entire film and is the character the audience identifies with the least. Even from the poster it is clear that he is a minor character of little interest, so although he is positioned slightly away from the rest of the group we don't expect him to get bumped off for the same reason we expect Saul and Reuben to live."

John was fascinated. Despite Sherlock's feigned disinterest, he seemed to have memorised all the characters names as well as having taken in the plot in detail. It was hard to see how this guy's mind worked, he thought.

"So, now we get to Linus. Even from the way he is put on the poster it is clear that he is an outsider. He's actually given quite a prominent position, although he is effectively a minor character. That suggests there is another reason the eye is intended to be drawn towards him. The obvious conclusion is that we are meant to pick him out from the start as someone sympathetic, identify with him throughout the film, and then be outraged as he is unexpectedly dispatched. It seemed to have worked perfectly in your case."

Sherlock picked up the flier and gave it to John, then turned back to the window. John just shook his head. There wasn't really all that much he could say. Having it analysed like that made it all too clear that that was exactly how the poster was meant to work. It was easy enough to see once you'd seen the film, but he could never have guessed any of it just looking at the image.

He mused over Sherlock's extraordinary powers of observation a little longer, then put the flier away as dinner arrived. It was marginally better than lunch, and much more enjoyable than the popcorn. _Either that or I'm getting used to it_, John thought.

Still Sherlock didn't eat anything, making John wonder what the guy existed on. _Caffeine and sugar, to judge by the amount of coffee he gets through._ Or maybe he really did go and plug himself in at night, John thought. He found it hard to shake his first impression of Sherlock, and he was wondering how things would go when they both took their Voigt-Kampff tests tomorrow.

-ooOoo-

The lights in the cabin were dimmed when John suddenly shook awake. He hadn't noticed he'd dropped off, but he wasn't surprised. The book he had brought with him was proving as dull as dishwater, and it had been a very long day. Someone, presumably the space hostess, had draped a thin and scratchy blanket across him.

He stretched and looked at his watch. Twenty past one, ship's time. He glanced across to the window, only to find that Sherlock was exactly where he was the last time John saw him, bent over his communicator, his pale face lit eerily by the glow from the display, looking focused, intent. He didn't look as if he had slept, or was planning to. John lowered his seat as much as it allowed, grabbed the blanket and rolled over onto his good side.

The family across the aisle had managed to settle themselves, although he had to smile at the disorganised heap they had ended up in. The children were draped across their parents with complete abandon, limbs splayed in all directions, and snoring quietly. The parents looked exhausted, having fallen asleep where they were sitting, all sense of composure gone. John wasn't sure why he felt a pang of jealousy – after all, it must be hard for them, and traumatic, leaving everything behind like this. But they seemed like such a close-knit unit, John had little doubt that they'd be fine. He fell asleep again musing on it.

-ooOoo-


	4. Chapter 4

He woke early in the morning to find Sherlock dozing, lying on his back with his hands folded across his chest, still fully dressed and looking entirely composed. As John looked at him he opened his eyes, immediately straightening his chair and looking wide awake.

"Ready for another day, Doctor?"

John stretched as far as his shoulder would allow and gave his back a cursory rub. He felt surprisingly groggy considering he hadn't had anything to drink the night before. He yawned, and said, "Eh, yes. I think so."

He stuck with tea and toast for breakfast, not feeling up for yet another nightmare meal. To his surprise Sherlock ordered the same.

"So, you do eat, then."

"I would hardly call it food. Call it fuel. Besides, I think I'm getting somewhere."

John gave him a blank stare. "Sorry? Getting where?"

"The case, John. Berserking replicants, remember?"

"Oh." John rubbed his face in an effort to wake up properly. "Sorry. Have you solved it? Sitting on a spaceship?"

Sherlock smiled briefly. "Not quite. But I believe we have some good leads. We'll have to make a few visits when we arrive."

John couldn't ignore the 'we' in the statements. "You're serious then, about me coming along?" Only when he finished the sentence did he realise that sounded far too needy. "I mean," he added, clearing his throat in an effort to salvage his pride, "you seem pretty self-sufficient."

"I like company when I'm on a case, and I work better when I have someone to talk to. Talking to my communicator just attracts attention."

John looked at him, wondering if that was a joke or not. It was hard to tell from the guy's dead-pan expression. He still felt groggy, and not ready to endure Sherlock's razor-sharp wit. He fervently wished someone would bring him his cup of tea.

"So I'm basically filling in for your communicator."

Sherlock gave him a sly smile. "Relax, you're doing fine."

Before he could think of anything to say back the space hostess arrived with their breakfast. John seized the opportunity for a distraction as he took his plate.

"Thank you. Listen, we need to book in for our VK tests. Can we do that now?"

The girl produced an electronic organiser. "Sure. I've got an open slot at ten. And then another one at twelve?" She looked across to Sherlock to see if he would be happy with that time.

Sherlock shook his head. "No need. I'm exempt."

John turned to Sherlock in astonishment as the girl looked at him dubiously. "Sorry sir, but nobody's exempt."

"Well, I am." He reached into his jacket and produced an official-looking document in a leather wallet from his inside pocket. John thought the leather looked real; if so it would have cost a small fortune. Sherlock passed it to the hostess, who studied it for some time, making a few notes in her organiser before giving it back to him.

"I'm sorry sir, but you understand I will need to get this checked."

"Naturally."

Sherlock smiled as the girl walked off, and John took the wallet off him. "What's this?"

When Sherlock didn't answer he took a good look at the document. It looked very official, entirely genuine, and proclaimed that the named bearer was exempt from any and all forms of replicant testing. He passed it back to Sherlock.

"Is that real?"

"Yes."

"You said you were human."

"Hm. And I don't see why I should keep on having to prove it."

John stared at him in some disbelief. "Us mere mortals have to."

Sherlock shrugged as he put the thing back in his pocket. "And I don't."

"But how did you get that? I didn't even know there was such a thing as exemption from VK tests."

Sherlock just raised his eyebrow and pointedly turned his attention to his toast, leaving John hanging with more questions than answers. In a way he'd been looking forward to the testing, to some official confirmation that Sherlock was indeed not a replicant. For all the pomp of the document that Sherlock had just produced it hadn't actually stated that the bearer was human. The fact that he needed the document at all made John somewhat uncomfortable.

He brushed the thought aside. It was probably more common than he realised in the circles in which Sherlock moved, he'd just never come across it in his more mundane existence. He tried to reason away the fact that the space hostess hadn't either – she looked very young and was probably new. Holding that thought he started on his breakfast.

-ooOoo-

Compared to the previous day, most of the second day on the ship proved positively humdrum. As John turned up for his VK test it became obvious that nothing was going to plan and that the day's schedule had already been put into disarray by a number of overrunning tests, added to by faulty equipment. When he made to go back to his seat he was told he needed to remain in the queue or risk losing his place. In the end he managed to get into his old army mindset of hurry-up-and-wait, sat down and passed a couple of hours in a zen-like state.

When his turn finally came, an hour after lunch, the test itself was almost a formality. With his naturally high level of empathy it was obvious to even the most untrained observer that John was no replicant. He returned to his seat, certificate in hand, feeling somewhat deflated. Sherlock hadn't moved from where he had left him three hours ago, hunched over his communicator. He looked up when John arrived.

"Congratulations, Doctor, you are officially human."

John smirked. "Thanks. I need a drink after all that. And some food."

Sherlock straightened out his legs and sat up. "Are you brave enough to revisit the bar?"

"I'm sure we'll survive."

The bar was as bad as the day before, but at least this time the barman didn't attempt to swindle them, and the rest of the visitors left them alone. The group of miners was there again, or maybe they were still there, but they made an impressive effort of pretending that neither John nor Sherlock existed. John even managed to obtain a couple of tiny packets of real peanuts to make up for his lost lunch, which he considered a major victory.

Sherlock showed him some of the messages that he had received from the Mars police, more gruesome images, and long lists of names, dates and contact details of anyone and everyone that had any connection with the replicants as well as the murder victims. It seemed the Mars police force, although enthusiastic, was rather scattergun in its approach to addressing the case.

"How do they expect you to be able to do anything with that? It's just reams and reams of names. Aren't they being a bit overzealous?" John was staring at Sherlock's screen as the list of meaningless details scrolled past. They might as well have sent Sherlock the entire population roll of the colony, it would have been quicker.

Sherlock was totally non-committal. "Hm."

"Oh, honestly, Sherlock. Where do they expect you to start? There's far too much information here."

"There is no such thing as _too much_ information, John. What we are looking for is patterns. And there are several. They are just hard to see when it's presented like that." He took the device back and looked over the list again, then sighed. "I need a wall."

John stared at him, waiting for an explanation, but since none was forthcoming they drank in silence for a while. Sherlock was growing increasingly restless, occasionally glancing at the screen, scrolling up and down, alternated with tapping the table irritably with his long fingers. Suddenly he threw his hands up in exasperation and almost shouted, "Oh, it's no use. I need to _do_ something."

He jumped up and walked off, leaving John not a little bemused with his own drink and half a glass of quality whisky. In the end he decided not to follow Sherlock, but calmly finish his beer instead. When he was done Sherlock still hadn't returned, so he followed the beer with the leftover whisky. Then he ate the peanuts and made his way back to his seat. Sherlock was nowhere to be seen.

Twenty minutes or so later Sherlock re-emerged, looking – and smelling – as if he had just had a shower.

"Your hair's wet."

"A brilliant observation, Doctor."

"Have you just had a shower?"

"Clearly."

John's mind reeled. The cost of water on these flights was astronomical. Most people got by with a quick wash in the morning and a change of underwear. He'd never heard of anyone taking a shower on a Mars shuttle. In fact, he didn't ever know where the showers _were_ on this flight.

"I'm beginning to think that whoever hired you for this case is paying you too much."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows. "I needed to clear my head."

_And that's it_, John thought. The man needs to clear his head so he spends the equivalent of a week's wages on a shower. Different worlds, indeed. "Most people would have stuck with the whisky. Which I drank, by the way."

Sherlock gave a brief laugh.

-ooOoo-

This time John couldn't manage to convince Sherlock to accompany him to he cinema, so he went to the early evening show on his own. Today's offering was a romantic comedy and although he enjoyed it he was glad Sherlock hadn't come. He'd hate to think how he would probably have ripped it to shreds just by looking at the opening credits.

The day slowly receded into night, and after another gruesome meal John found himself dozing off again. Sherlock had been entirely uncommunicative all evening, having given up on his communicator in disgust halfway through and tossing the thing into the luggage compartment, and now seemingly unable to settle to anything for more than half a minute. His almost constant shifting around reached a peak at around a quarter past eleven, ship's time, at which point Sherlock jumped up, squeezed his way past a sleepy John and charged off along the aisle.

John recovered his blanket and rolled onto his good side once more, groggy with sleep. Every so often Sherlock would stride past, his long legs steadily pacing across the floor, apparently doing a continuous circuit of the whole ship. John fell asleep watching him pass by at regular intervals, once more contemplating the strangeness of him, half wondering if he was real.

-ooOoo-

By the end of the third day on the ship John was nearly ready to strangle Sherlock, and almost decided he would have nothing else to do with him.

He was convinced Sherlock never slept at all during the night, as his army training had made him a light sleeper and he would have certainly noticed him squeezing past him to get to his chair. In the morning he found Sherlock back in the games room, doing some kind of intricate physics experiment on the air hockey table that involved at least twenty glasses from the bar more or less filled with a variety of drinks positioned in a seemingly random pattern across the table and Sherlock kneeling in front of it, flicking the puck with his index finger time and time again, apparently aiming at aligning glasses and puck in such a way that the thing went into the other half's goal with a single flick after bouncing off each glass in turn. The place smelled a bit like a brewery.

John watched him for a good while before Sherlock even noticed his presence, and marvelled at the bloke's misplaced focus and energy.

"That's one way to spend your pocket money," he said as Sherlock put another coin into the machine to keep the air flow going.

Sherlock gave him a quick glance over before responding. "Don't be dense. I picked the lock on the cash box of course. I don't carry coins."

_Of course not_, John thought. He could hear the jangle of metal as Sherlock was moving about, and wondered exactly how much had been held in the machine, and whether Sherlock was going to return the money to its rightful owner.

With one final flick Sherlock made the puck follow a perfect course among the glasses and land in the opposite goal with a satisfying _clunk_. Mission accomplished, he straightened up and looked at John again. "Well, that was dull." He looked at the table and added, as an afterthought, "Drink?"

John gave a dry laugh. "I don't know. What have you got?"

Sherlock surveyed the table. "Two types of whisky, dry gin, gin & tonic, straight tonic, some awful cider that I wouldn't feed to my worst enemy, but it's gone flat anyway so you wouldn't want it, two different kinds of stout, a couple of lagers, vodka and orange, straight vodka, straight orange, three different types of red wine, dry white, sweet white, two glasses of rosé and a margarita."

John smirked. "Sherlock, it's breakfast time."

Sherlock looked at him blankly for a moment, and then said, "You'll want the orange then." He passed the glass to John who accepted it with only a brief observation on how surreal his life was becoming.

"Twenty-one different types of drink?"

"Obviously the different densities of the drinks affect the physics of the interaction between the glasses and the puck, especially with the thin glass they use in this place. It wouldn't be much of a challenge otherwise."

John just raised his eyebrows. He wasn't sure what the right answer to a statement like that would be.

As he was sipping the orange juice Sherlock disappeared into the bar, only to emerge half a minute later with one of the miners, the one who had attacked them with a knife of all people. The man was as white as a sheet and trembling slightly. When he recognised John he went an unpleasant shade of green. John just stared, non-plussed, but the bloke clearly interpreted this as a silent threat as he began to shake even more. Sherlock steered him to the air hockey table, hand lightly resting on the man's shoulder.

"Clear it for me."

The man briefly surveyed the table, cataloguing the amount of alcohol on display. His expression went from dread to disbelief. "Wha- _what?_"

Sherlock sighed. "You heard what I said. Clear it. I have no further need for it." He let go of the man, giving him a slight push in the direction of the table as he did so, and stepped back. As if on cue the timer on the table ran out, the air flow stopped and an eerie silence suddenly descended upon the scene. John briefly wondered if that was a coincidence, or whether Sherlock's sense of dramatic timing was really that good. Given the wicked half-smile that was playing around Sherlock's mouth he was inclined to go for the latter.

The miner stood there a moment, a comical look of indecision on his face, and then leaned forward and grabbed five of the glasses in one go. He gave John and Sherlock one more confused look to see where the catch was, then returned to the bar as fast as he was able to without dropping his load.

"Be sure to come back for the rest," Sherlock called after his disappearing form. John sniggered, and Sherlock gave him a surprised grin. "Well, what else was I going to do with it?"

John shook his head. "Coming for breakfast?"

"Dull," was all the response he got to that, but Sherlock followed him back to the seats anyway.

As the morning wore on John began to regret ever going to find Sherlock. Without any apparent new leads coming in on his communicator Sherlock grew increasingly agitated. He couldn't settle to anything, seemingly unable to regain the quiet composure he had at the beginning of the flight just looking at the stars. When John suggested it as an option Sherlock looked at him as if he had gone mad.

"They're just stars, John. They don't _do_ anything. They're completely irrelevant to the case."

"But – " John managed, a bit thrown, "You've spent hours staring at them in the last two days."

Sherlock gave him a blank stare that spoke volumes about how far his reality and John's were really separated. "I was thinking."

After that things went from bad to worse. Sherlock now focused on the in-flight magazine, scathingly taking apart every single article it contained. Although it was funny up to a point it became grating after a while, especially when Sherlock then moved onto the book that John was trying to read, making insinuations not just about the book itself, which John wholeheartedly agreed with, but also about any person who would choose to read such rubbish and their inferred intellectual prowess. At this point he cut Sherlock off.

"Yes, thank you, Mr. Holmes. It's just a bit of light reading. It doesn't reflect my life history and choices, nor my level of academic achievement."

Sherlock shut up, his raised eyebrow the only indication that he disagreed distinctly. He sat quietly for a moment, then abruptly jumped up, squeezed past John and disappeared down the aisle.

The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to deflect Sherlock's snide but accurate observations every time he came past on his rounds of the ship. He reminded John more and more of a bored child, especially when the children across the aisle also began to act up. The parents were finding it increasingly difficult to control them, and the next time Sherlock passed by John could barely make out what he said over the screaming.

He was very close to telling Sherlock where to stick it when the taller man suddenly stopped and made his way back to the screaming children. He observed them for a while, as if they presented an unusual and interesting problem, and finally said, "They're bored."

The mum sighed an exasperated sigh at him and nearly shouted, "Of course they're bored. We ran out of things to do yesterday, there's nothing left. It's not like I can keep chucking money at the games machines." She was holding on to one of the kids, trying to stop him pulling his sister's hair. Judging from the girl's screams she was only partly succeeding.

Sherlock looked at the mother a moment, then poked a long finger into the boy's shoulder, who finally stopped torturing his sibling and turned round. Sherlock took a coin from his pocket and flicked it up into the air, the shiny metal spinning a slightly too-slow trajectory until he suddenly snatched it out of its arc.

"Air hockey?"

When John went to check twenty minutes later he found Sherlock and the two children completely engrossed in a highly complicated version of the game which involved a whole new set of rules that were apparently being evolved on the spot. The darts score board had been taken over for what appeared to be a three-tiered hierarchical scoring system which John could make heads nor tails of. To his total surprise Sherlock seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

"The cognitive abilities at this age are remarkable, John. Their adaptive speed along with their high retention allows for levels of complexity in their competitive interactions that I had not previously appreciated. Combined with an astounding flexibility in thinking together with a strong determination for attainment this is proving fascinating."

John thought a moment, translating. "You mean they are playing an imaginative game and cheat like hell to win at all cost."

"And they are remarkably easy to run," Sherlock added, not put off by John's sarcasm.

John noted the two glasses of juice and the packet of biscuits on the side table. He shook his head with an incredulous smile. "Well, I'd better leave you to your experiment. Wouldn't want to influence the findings."

When he returned to his seat the children's parents were already fast asleep.

-ooOoo—

The next morning John woke to find Sherlock fast asleep next to him, still looking composed even in complete relaxation, arms neatly folded over his chest and the only concession to his state of rest being the disappearance of his jacket. John looked him over, noting that there was very little of him underneath the posh clothes, all long arms and legs attached to a wiry frame. All he could think was that Sherlock could do with feeding up a bit.

Breakfast came and went and still Sherlock slept, his slow, deep breathing somehow incongruous with his usual animated energy. John returned to his book, wondering when Sherlock might wake up.

Ten minutes before their entry into Mars orbit Sherlock suddenly opened his eyes and sat up. John couldn't help himself. "Good morning, sleepyhead."

Sherlock frowned at him. "I'm not sleepy."

"You must have been. You slept for ages."

Sherlock gave him a blank look. "There was nothing left to do. It was a sensible strategy to preserve my sanity."

John had to remember to close his mouth. "Oh."

He didn't have all that much time to be surprised, though, as the lights for seatbelts were already going on and the space hostesses were handing out the customary chewing gum. John smiled as the children next to him grabbed a handful each. They seemed none the worse for an evening at the hands of Sherlock. He briefly wondered how the game had finished.

Re-entry was nowhere near as traumatic as lift-off had been, but then John was an awful lot calmer this time. To his relief he didn't black out again, although he still felt queasy as they were turning over the crater towards the space port for touchdown. Sherlock, he noted without surprise, looked relaxed, bored almost.

He had to look away from the window when the ship turned into the sun glinting off the polymer dome that covered the crater, bathing the interior in a bright orange glow. The light was nothing like he had ever seen on Earth. There was something about the intensity and colour that was entirely alien, soft, much like liquid honey in the way it was draping itself across the interior of the ship.

_So different to the Moon_, he thought, where the sun had been just like it was on Earth; harsh, clear, no-nonsense. He'd never felt far from home on the Moon, but now the realisation of being on another planet was so clear it was almost physical.

John's musings had distracted him to such a degree that he was shocked to feel the ship touch down, the jolt as the rear wheels hit the runway shaking him back to reality. Within minutes they were parked up at the airlock, waiting to enter the space port. People were beginning to get up to get their belongings together regardless of the space hostesses' attempts to keep everyone seated. _Four days_, John thought, _and we are close to anarchy_. He took his place in the queue for the exit, Sherlock coming in behind him.

They made their way down, the rickety stairs bringing some stark reality to the glamorous image of space travel that the company liked to portray in their brochures. It made John smile as he walked off towards the terminal. For the first time since this adventure began he felt light-hearted, he found himself looking forward to his new start. He gave a little hop to try out the gravity. Strangely enough, after four days on the ship Mars gravity didn't feel all that different. The Mars shoes with their heavy soles certainly helped as well.

He only realised that Sherlock wasn't following him when he heard the shouting. He turned around to see the tall figure of Sherlock in the distance, slowly pacing along the side of the space ship, pursued by a handful of security personnel who were trying to obstruct his progress. He swore under his breath and broke out of the line.

"Excuse me." John was trying to break through the security guards who were now encircling Sherlock. "Yes, excuse me." He managed to squeeze in. The guards were still walking along with Sherlock, who was ignoring them, continuing his slow walk along the ship's length.

"Sherlock," John hissed as he came alongside him. "What are you doing?"

Sherlock took no notice of him. The security guards were now beginning to hassle John as well.

"I'm sorry," John said, trying to look as pacifying as he could. "He's… ehm. He's my friend, and, ehm… you know. He's got some problems. He's not dangerous."

He was aware that he sounded like he was making it up on the spot, but he hoped that the security people would put it down to nerves. Unfortunately Sherlock, all big coat and imposing presence, didn't really look like he had any special needs. He had now made it all the way to the rear end of the ship, where he stopped abruptly. He suddenly focused on John, looking briefly surprised.

"John."

John turned immediately to the security personnel. "You see, he's snapped out of it. Let me take him back to customs. Come on, Sherlock." He tugged Sherlock's sleeve, making the most of the guards' obvious confusion to whisper to Sherlock. "I've told them you're special needs. Let's get out of here."

Sherlock twisted his face abruptly into a goofy smile and pointed at the craft. "John. John, it's a space ship."

The transformation was instantaneous, and very convincing. John managed a look that he hoped had the right amount of exasperation in it. "I know, Sherlock. We've been on it. Let's go and see the nice habitat." He pulled Sherlock's arm again.

With one last apologetic look to the security guards they began to make their way back to the line of passengers waiting to enter the colony. Sherlock still had a silly grin plastered on his face and was now looking around the space port building, doing a little pirouette every so often and clapping his hands in glee. The security guards followed closely behind, keeping a close eye on them and occasionally speaking into their radios.

John made a show of trying to calm Sherlock down, eventually giving him his phone for want of any better ideas. Sherlock instantly became all focus, and after half a minute John turned to the security personnel, trying to look reassuring. "He's fine now, he'll be fine until we get inside."

The group of guards looked unsure, but it was clear that they had other duties to attend to. Eventually they wandered off, looking back occasionally. John tried his best to avoid catching Sherlock's eye, although he could feel the taller man looking at him. When he thought it was safe he looked up.

Sherlock looked almost expressionless, but there was such a wicked glint in his eye that John couldn't suppress a giggle. In return Sherlock broke out into a wide grin followed by a deep, heartfelt laugh.

John blanched as he saw one of the security guards turn around to eye them suspiciously. He elbowed Sherlock urgently in the ribs. "Ssh, we can't giggle, they're still onto us." Sherlock resumed a look of gullible innocence and John gave the security guard a friendly wave. With that, the man obviously decided that they were both mad and walked off.

"What was that about?" John asked, taking his phone back. Sherlock looked thoughtful. "I was right about the ship. There's at least ten foot missing on the inside."

"That's a lot of space."

"Hm."

Outside the terminal building they walked along the broad, covered corridor and John looked down upon the crater that would be home from now on. It was a much larger place than he had at first thought, at least the size of a large city, and from what they could see from their transparent walkway it was bustling with activity.

In the elevator on the way down to the bottom of the crater he took out his phone and found the hostel booking. This was the one part he wasn't looking forward to – spending time in what was in essence a glorified box with a sink until he could establish himself as a GP again and rent something humane.

As they came out of the lift, John suddenly felt a bit awkward. He had no idea where Sherlock was staying and he realised he had no way of contacting him when they went their separate ways. Sherlock looked ready to pace off as soon as they were on the pavement. John cleared his throat.

"Right. Ehm. I'll be seeing you then."

"Yes," Sherlock said, distractedly, looking at the city. Then, suddenly, he seemed to register what John was saying and fixed him with a frown. "No. Come with me."

John hesitated. He felt out of his depth. There were so many things he was unsure about at this moment and Sherlock was only adding to them. "Sorry, Sherlock, I should really check in to my hotel first."

"Hostel. You are renting a two-by-three metre box on shadeside. I can't see why anyone would be in a hurry to go there."

John was getting embarrassed now. He didn't know how Sherlock had worked that out, but he'd hoped to keep quiet about it. "How did you figure that out?"

Sherlock looked at him as if he had said something daft. "You gave me your phone."

"Wha…? No, you weren't meant to go looking at everything. There's personal stuff on there."

"I know."

John looked incredulous. "Sherlock, I can't believe you went digging around my private correspondence while I was trying to keep you out of trouble. What were you thinking?"

Sherlock met his gaze with a look of complete innocence. "I was thinking it was quite interesting."

Before John could say anything, he cut in. "Look, I've got a two-bedroom suite booked at the Martian. It's one of the best hotels in the crater. It's up on the crater side, sunside, and I believe it has a pool, a gym and a cinema. You are welcome to join me. It's either that or live in a dark box. Your choice, Doctor."

With that, he strode off in the direction of the taxi ranks. John only hesitated for half a second. Cursing under his breath he went after Sherlock.


End file.
